


Swell

by popfly



Category: Schitt's Creek (TV) RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-03
Updated: 2020-07-03
Packaged: 2021-03-04 20:07:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,866
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25052149
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/popfly/pseuds/popfly
Summary: Beach fluff.
Relationships: Dan Levy/Noah Reid
Comments: 19
Kudos: 57





	Swell

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by Dan's old Spain travelogue for MTV Canada. Thanks to TINN and Gray, as always.

The water of Lake Huron is still chilly as Dan scoops with his hands, paddling away from shore. He’s wearing a wetsuit over his swim trunks, but he’s bare from the wrists to fingertips, and after an hour of surfing he’s starting to really feel the cold. He’ll catch one more wave and then call it, join the rest of his crew by the fire pit on the beach. 

The lake waves aren’t huge by any stretch. Nothing like in California, where he’d first learned to surf in the sun-warmed waters of the Pacific Ocean. But they’re big enough that when Dan catches one, popping to his feet and balancing as quickly as he can, it’s exhilarating. 

He dives off into the water before he reaches the shallows, and then hauls his board under his arm as he finds his footing in the rocky bottom of the shore and makes his way up the beach. The fire is roaring now, and Dan can hear snatches of conversation and laughter before they’re born away on the breeze. 

“Looking good out there, Levy!” Stacey calls. She’s just dragged her rented board out of the water, and she’s peeling her wetsuit down her arms. Her bikini is bright pink, which should clash with the red of her hair but somehow works instead. Stacey can make a lot of things work that shouldn’t. 

“You’re not doing so badly, yourself,” he says, going over and laying his board in the sand next to hers. Eventually they’ll have to carry them back up to the cottage, wipe them down and stow them, but with the sun still well above the horizon he’s not going to be worried about it just yet. He wants a cold drink, and maybe a s’more or whatever else his friends have brought down to the fire. 

As he peels his own wetsuit down, the water dripping off his hair and down his neck practically freezing compared to the warmth of the air and his newly-exposed skin, Dan catches a glimpse of some unfamiliar faces amidst his and Stacey’s group. Three guys, all in shorts and tanks. One in particular catches Dan’s eye, a stockier guy with a ball cap on, brim tipped up. He has a guitar slung on his back. 

“Who are they?” Dan asks. Out of the corner of his eye he can see Stacey look at him and then follow his line of sight. 

“Oh, hey! They came!” She delivers one of her signature excited pinches to the goosebumped skin of Dan’s biceps. 

“Ow, what? Who?”

She’s smirking when Dan tears his eyes away from ball-cap-and-guitar guy to look over at her. That’s never a good sign. That smirk always means trouble. Specifically trouble for Dan. “Some friends of mine. I mentioned we were going to be here for the weekend and that there were other great cottages on the beach—“

“Stacey,” Dan tries to interrupt but she steamrolls him like always. 

“—and they all just finished up a play and were looking to get away. I’m glad they made it.” She pops her eyebrows at him. “That’s Noah.”

Dan crosses his arms over his chest. “There are three of them.”

“Mmhm. And the one you were just ogling is Noah.”

“I was not—” Dan starts, and then realizes the volume of his voice and the direction of the wind and immediately drops a decibel. “I was not _ogling_.”

“Mmhm,” Stacey says again, smirk still firmly in place. Dan huffs. “Come on, come meet them.”

As they trudge through the sand, Dan adjusts the wetsuit flopping around his waist and scrapes a hand through his wet hair. It’s going to fluff up horribly in about ten minutes, he doesn’t know why he bothers, but then Noah glances over at them as they approach and his mouth splits in a grin and—yeah. That’s why he’s bothering. 

“Hey!” One of the tank top guys exclaims, and Stacey practically flings herself at him. He looks thrilled with it, wrapping an arm around her waist and laughing into her wet hair. Dan feels his eyebrows pull all the way in and down; he has never seen this person in his life, why is Stacey climbing him like a tan, attractive tree?

“I’m so glad you guys came,” Stacey says when she’s composed herself. She reaches back for Dan, practically dragging him forward by the chest hair. “You’ve met everyone else, I’m assuming; this is Dan!”

“Dan, hey,” says the guy who is no longer being mauled by Stacey. He holds out his hand and Dan shakes it, trying to smooth out his expression to make a good impression. “I’m Sam.”

Dan has literally never heard Stacey talk about anyone named Sam, and they are going to have so many words as soon as they get back to their cottage. 

“This is Alex,” Sam is saying, gesturing to the guy at his side. “And Noah.”

Noah’s smile might be brighter than the sun currently burning the back of Dan’s neck. He grips Dan’s hand firmly and briefly, eyes warm and sparkling behind pale lashes. There are curls escaping the pushed back brim of his cap, glinting bronze. Dan’s mouth feels like it’s full of sand. 

“Nice to meet you,” he manages to say without croaking. Stacey presses a beer into his hand and he pops the tab, takes a long drink, and tries not to watch Noah watching him swallow. 

They’re separated by a few people and several meters, but the air between them seems to crackle and spark like the logs in the fire. Dan chats with Sam, trying to get the scoop on his intentions towards Stacey without coming right out with the shovel talk. Then he goes to the cooler for another beer and gets waylaid by Julia, who had been napping up at the cottage while Dan and Stacey surfed, and has emerged fresh and chatty. But no matter what spot he occupies in the loose circle around the fire, he’s constantly aware of Noah. 

As the sun starts to drop out of sight, the breeze cools and the sky turns shades of pink. Dan has a three beer buzz, and his eyes snag on Noah more and more frequently. The guitar is now facing forward, and Noah fiddles with it as he talks to Alex and Elena, the twang of it barely audible over the fire. 

“Will you sing us something?” Sam asks. He’s sitting in the sand with Stacey pressed to his side. They make a cute couple, Dan thinks, the beer making him feel charitable. He’s still going to grill Stacey about him as soon as they’re on their own, but he’ll be more gentle about it now. 

“Nah,” Noah says, dragging out the vowel. It’s obviously false modesty; why would he bring his guitar if he wasn’t going to play?

“You should.” It takes Dan a second to realize that statement came from his own mouth. A couple pairs of eyes turn his way but he locks onto Noah’s. There are crinkles at the corners of them. 

Noah clears his throat and strums a couple of times, and then starts playing. Three seconds in and someone, Dan thinks it’s Alex, groans, “Oh, no.” Noah grins. 

“Nobody on the road,” he starts to sing, his voice warm and raspy. “Nobody on the beach.”

Everyone is various degrees of amused by Noah’s song choice, but Dan is straight up enthralled. It’s hard to figure out what to watch: Noah’s fingers on the strings, Noah’s mouth as it shapes words, Noah’s bright brown eyes. He ends up flicking between all three, ignoring the cheesy lyrics as Noah’s voice washes over him.

When the song ends everyone whoops and applauds, and Dan tucks his sweaty beer can into the sweaty crook of his elbow and claps his sweaty palms together. He’s too hot, maybe he needs to get away from the fire for a bit. But Noah is plucking up another song, and Dan isn’t going anywhere, sweat be damned. 

The fourth beer is probably a poor decision, but the fire is still going strong and Dan will not be the first to go to bed. Especially since Noah is still singing, sitting cross-legged in the sand with the guitar cradled in his lap, crooning—yes, crooning, Dan is sure no one around the fire would argue with that word choice—something sad and slow that Dan doesn’t recognize. The words sort of blend with the music, which blends with the popping of the logs and the lapping of the waves on the shore, and Dan’s head is swimmy and fuzzy from the booze and—

“Dan, love, maybe it’s time to call it a night?” Julia’s eyes are bright with reflected flames when Dan lifts his head to look in them. And oh, when did his head drop down to her shoulder?

“Maybe,” he mumbles. He doesn’t want to leave the warm circle of Noah’s music, but it’s hard to keep his eyes open. It’s also hard to go up the steps—he looks down at his foot on the driftwood, wondering how he got there from the fire. Julia’s arm is around his waist, but she’s so small she can’t quite get her balance either. 

“Up now, come on,” Julia says, and Dan lifts his foot. They make it up the steps to the side yard of their cottage and then around onto the deck where the sliding doors are made mirrors by the moonlight.

“You look drunk,” Dan says to his own image, which laughs back at him. 

The next thing he knows is cool, soft cotton against his cheek and the darkness of slipping off to sleep.

~~

It’s a whine that wakes him up, and the first conscious thought he has is, “Ugh.” He says it out loud for emphasis, and gets another whine in response. When he cracks his eyes open the sunlight creeping between the slats of the wooden blinds assaults him, making his head throb. “Ugh,” he repeats, and again he hears the whine.

It’s Redmond, standing at the door to his tiny room, looking plaintive. Redmond rarely ever whines, which is why Dan didn’t immediately identify the sound. When Dan glances quickly at the face of his phone to see the time, he finds out why. 

“I am so sorry,” he says, rolling over and placing his feet on the floor. His pulse pounds from the soles of his feet up into his temples, and his stomach pitches and rolls. “Oh god.” He presses his lips together and the wave of nausea passes. “Okay.”

He’s wearing a pair of shorts, and the last thing he remembers is talking to himself in the mirror. No, the door. Oh god, Julia had to drag him into the house and put him to bed. 

With that mortifying thought rattling around in his skull, along with his shrunken, alcohol-dehydrated brain, he gingerly gets to his feet. He has to pee and scrub the awful taste out of his mouth before he even steps foot outside, but he does it in record time, and then shrugs into a t-shirt. 

His flip-flops and Red’s leash are both next to the sliding doors, which Dan studiously avoids looking at as he unlatches them and hauls them open. He pushes his sunglasses firmly onto his nose and wills his stomach to settle as he and Redmond step onto the deck. 

Even as desperate to pee as Redmond must be, he doesn’t pull on his leash, letting Dan set a slow pace. But as soon as his paws hit grass he squats, and Dan lets himself flop against the railing to do some deep breathing while Red relieves himself. 

His dog deserves more than a quick pit stop, so Dan lets him trot down the driftwood steps to the beach, and they start a leisurely stroll in the late morning sunshine that only minorly exacerbates Dan’s hangover. 

There’s a private beach further down, demarcated by wood pilings, and that’s where Dan and Redmond turn around. There are towels dotted along the sand, a few people out splashing in the surf despite the fact that the water must be freezing this early in the day. As they draw closer to their cottage Dan notices someone sitting near their fire pit. Someone in a ball cap. 

Someone who jumps to their feet as soon as they spot Redmond, and lopes up the slope of sand. 

“Morning!” Noah calls. Dan remembers his voice being soothing and warm last night, but now the volume of it is unbearable. 

“Oh god, don’t,” Dan says before he can check himself. He puts a hand over one ear and grimaces showily, hoping Noah gets the hint. His quiet chuckle tells Dan that he does. 

“Sorry,” he stage-whispers, and then crouches in front of Redmond, holding out his hand for an introductory sniff. “Who’s this?”

“My dog,” Dan says. His brain is still shrunken and useless in his head, and he needs at least a gallon of water. When Noah tips his head back to smile up at Dan, one corner tipped up teasingly, Dan grimaces again. “Redmond. Sorry, rough morning.”

“Ah,” Noah says knowingly. “Seems to be going around. Sam stumbled into the kitchen while I was making breakfast, ass-naked, grunted at me and stole my bacon.”

At the mention of bacon, Dan’s stomach flips and growls all at the same time. He presses his lips together. 

“Sorry,” Noah says, wrinkling his nose. It’s cute. Too cute. Dan needs to lay back down. 

“S’fine,” he says. Redmond is nosing at Noah’s hand, scooting right into the space between his knees, begging for attention in his gentle way. Noah laughs and gives it easily, scratching under Red’s collar. 

“Hi, Redmond. I would love to pet you more but your dad looks a little green around the gills.”

“Green around the, what?”

Noah laughs again, and Dan just really can’t handle any of this, Noah’s warm eyes and his warm laugh and the way he’s all but snuggling Dan’s dog. He needs a gallon of water, a gallon of coffee, a shower, a nap, bacon, and he has no idea what order he needs them in. 

“I should let you get back.” Dan nods and then immediately regrets it, and Noah stands up. “Why don’t you go chug some water and I can bring over breakfast. Stacey was talking about all of us getting together today anyway.”

“Is she at your cabin?”

“Oh, uh, yeah. She spent the night with Sam. They kept us up.”

“ _Okay_ ,” Dan says, to shut that right down. He doesn’t need details. Noah is smirking infuriatingly. “Fine, I’ll see you in a bit then.”

“Cool.”

“Hey,” Dan says, turning at the base of the steps. “Give me fifteen? I want to shower.”

“You got it.”

~~

Julia is in the kitchen when Dan steps back inside, pouring herself a cup of coffee. Dan feels a mortified flush creep up his neck; they’ve been friends for a long time, Julia has seen Dan in much worse states, but he still doesn’t love that she had to drag him to bed.

“Good morning, I’m sorry, I love you,” he says, kicking off his sandals and unclipping Red’s leash before going over to give her a hug. She laughs brightly against his shoulder, and when he takes his sunglasses off to replace them with his regular glasses, which had been hooked in the collar of his shirt, she touches the skin under his eyes lightly with her fingers. 

“You look rough, my love.”

“I feel rough. And I have about fifteen minutes to try to feel less rough. Noah is coming over with breakfast? Or to cook breakfast? It’s unclear, actually, but we’re going to have guests soon.”

The cheeky, knowing grin on Julia’s face disappears behind her mug as she lifts it to her mouth. “Interesting.”

There’s no time to get into all the ways in which it is absolutely not interesting, so Dan just narrows his eyes at her and then gets down a glass to fill with water for him to chug en route to the shower. He feels vaguely more alive after a good scrubbing, and even truncated, his skincare ritual does wonders for his mood. Another glass of water, which he uses to down a handful of ibuprofen, and he’s ready for coffee. 

He’s not ready for Noah, shouldering open the sliding doors with his arms full of food. There’s something leafy in one of his hands. He’s balancing a package of bacon on top of a carton of eggs. There’s even a bottle of orange juice in the stack. Dan boggles at him for a moment, then takes a fortifying sip of coffee and says, “We do have food here, you know.”

“Do you have bacon?” Noah asks, carefully depositing his haul on the end of the counter and dropping immediately to his knees to rub Redmond’s ears. Dan’s throat goes suddenly dry. 

“No,” he croaks, and then gulps more coffee. 

“Orange juice?”

“I … no, but—“

“Parsley?”

So that’s what the leafy thing is. Did Noah just carry over a handful of parsley? Dan shakes his head minutely, and before Noah can open his mouth again blurts, “We have eggs.”

“Cheese?”

“Of course we have cheese,” Dan says, affronted at the notion that anyone might go on vacation and not have cheese. 

“Gruyère?”

“Alright,” Dan grumbles, giving in. Mostly because he wants to see what Noah plans on doing with the parsley and the Gruyère. 

Show off is apparently what he wants to do, as he whisks eggs (with a whisk he brought in his pocket) and cuts butter into a pan and deftly, swiftly whips up several of the most delicious looking omelettes Dan has ever seen. He’s so transfixed by the process that he doesn’t notice the kitchen filling up with their friends until he’s knocked from his reverie by Stacey’s elbow bumping his on the island. 

“He sings and he cooks?” She leers at Noah’s back, and Noah tips a terrible wink back over his shoulder at her. “Why haven’t you snapped him up yet, Samuel?”

Sam laughs good-naturedly, wrapping one long arm around Stacey’s shoulders. Dan glances over to catch the fond way Sam is looking at her while she continues to watch Noah work, and decides he likes Sam. He’s still going to grill Stacey about him later, though. 

Noah dishes food for everyone, even Sam the bacon thief, and the kitchen is quiet for a bit while everyone digs in. Dan cuts the corner off his omelette and gooey cheese oozes out. “Oh my god,” he can’t help but say, and then shoves the bite into his mouth to stop anything else coming out. When he looks up Noah is watching him, face flushed from the heat of the stove, pleased grin spread across his face. 

Dan chews, swallows, sips his orange juice. Then he smiles at Noah, because Noah carried a whisk in his pocket and brought a handful of fresh parsley, because he looks cute with pink cresting his cheekbones. Because he made Dan, made everyone, a delicious hangover breakfast. 

“Thanks for this,” Dan says, and Noah shrugs a shoulder, like it’s no big deal. 

The guys stay after breakfast, or brunch, more appropriately. There’s a gaming system in the living room that they fire up for a round of very competitive Super Smash something or the other that has too much jumping and yelling for Dan’s still tender brain. He takes Redmond out again, leaving everyone to their smashing, and is pleasantly unsurprised when Noah follows. 

“That’s intense,” he says, closing the sliding door on the noise. Dan hums in agreement, stepping closer to the edge of the deck so Redmond can reach the flower bed at the side of the cottage. “How are you feeling?”

“Much better,” Dan says, and looks back over his shoulder. Noah is leaning against the railing looking out over the sand and the water. The brim of his cap is knocked back again, which seems to be his preferred way of wearing it, and the sun burnishes the curls sticking out over his forehead. “Thanks to you,” Dan adds, because it’s true. Noah doesn’t turn his head, but Dan can see the corner of his mouth curl up. 

“You guys came up from Toronto, right?”

It’s a clumsy segue, but Dan follows along. “Yeah. We try to do a few of these weekend getaways every summer, if we can.” Noah nods thoughtfully, and Dan waits for Red to finish sniffing through the bushes. “You?”

“My parents have a cottage on the other side of Bruce Peninsula so we usually go there, but Stacey mentioned this place to Sam, and that’s all she wrote.”

“I meant, did you come up from Toronto, but now that you mention Sam, what is up with that?” After Redmond is through with his business he trots over to Noah and plops down at his feet, so Dan has an excuse to also get closer to Noah. He leans next to him, elbows on the railing, and tilts his face into the sun. It no longer feels like needles stabbing his eyeballs, which is nice. 

“Oh man, he is smitten.”

“I can tell. I think the feeling is mutual.”

Noah nods, and Dan glances over at him. Noah glances back, and his mouth is curled again. “Yeah.”

“So,” Dan says, digging his elbows into the rough wood of the railing, biting the inside of his cheek. “You did come up from Toronto?”

“We did.”

Dan chews his cheek a little more and then blows out a breath. “Would you,” he says, at the same time Noah starts talking, and then they both laugh. It’s such a cliche moment, with the sun and the sand and the water, the tips of Noah’s ears pink with a blush where they stick out from his cap. From their feet, Redmond makes a huffing sound, like even _he_ can’t believe how ridiculously trite this all is. Noah waves his hand to give Dan the go-ahead, and Dan is smiling when he asks, “Would you want to get together when we get back? Have dinner, maybe?”

Noah shifts so he can bump Dan’s shoulder with his, and then reaches out to circle Dan’s wrist with his fingers. “Yeah, Dan. I’d really like that.”

“Great,” Dan says, and not even the bead of sweat trickling down his spine or the still-slightly-sour feeling in his stomach can dampen the exhilaration he feels, knowing he has a date with Noah to look forward to when they get back to town. 

The sliding door screeches open, making Dan flinch, and Alex leans out, yelling, “Reid, get your ass in here. You owe me a rematch, don’t think I’ve forgotten.”

Noah squeezes Dan’s wrist and then gently lets it go before turning to bound into the cottage, yelling something endearingly bro-y in response. Dan looks down at Redmond and shakes his head, and then turns back out to the water and tilts his face back up to the sun.


End file.
